


Loyalties

by Headspacedeficit



Series: Royalty AU Sentence Starters [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Colonialism, F/M, Revolution (discussed)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Headspacedeficit/pseuds/Headspacedeficit
Summary: They gave her a name, Larissa, to smear over who she was.He gives up his name, to bury his association.





	Loyalties

“I pledge my fealty to you.”

           They’re little when B first says it.  Little and naive and so, so young.  He makes her promises out of clouds as time in the garden slows down to syrup in the humid afternoon heat.  It’s before he understands.  It’s before they understand that he does not belong to this country but this land and it’s people are told they belong under his.  His father is a viceroy.  Her grandmother was the empress.

 

“I pledge my fealty to you.”

           It’s later, after she learns the terms “abdication” and “figurehead” and “colonialism”, that she understands that B does not understand despite his oaths.  There are some conditions, she knows, that the son of the conqueror cannot share with the daughter of the conquered. 

 

“I pledge my fealty to you.”

           Governor Knight never uses words like “imperialism” or “Machiavellian”.  Instead he utters phrases like “mutually beneficial economic partnership” and “rule of law” and “civilization” while he smiles down at her.  He waves her off with foreign sweets and a pat on the head before resuming B’s lecture.  It’s that last word, “civilization”, that burns her more than the dismissal.  Later, B will crash into her study and scream his frustrations into her carefully crafted needlework. 

 

“I pledge my fealty to you.”

           There is a rebellion.  Her country has a resistance to it that has not faded away and it has boiled over in school halls and libraries.  The anger has spilled into the streets and mobs of men and women who look like her, who she looks like, chant her family name and run straight into the heel of foreign might.  She is made to watch their charade of a trial and say nothing.  She has no power.  She can beg nothing for them. 

 

“I pledge my fealty to you.”

           This time, it’s real.  Shitty does not fully understand. She thinks that he might never fully Know. But he does understand the risk of what they’re fighting for.  They know what discovery will do to them.  The Governor’s son will be sent to a land he doesn’t remember.  The Governor will execute the rebels.  The princess will burn with her land. 

**Author's Note:**

> [sidestuiff's Royalty AU Sentence Starters](http://sidestuiff.tumblr.com/post/92531136199/royalty-au-sentence-starters)


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